Living with two teenage daughters in the house can be a challenge at times. My daughters are really pretty easy and well behaved so I can’t complain, however, they have mood swings, which female doesn’t?

A few weeks back we had a major fall out at home that resulted in us relooking at how to deal with things. Bearing in mind that I was very aware of how the divorce had affected them. A few things came out in the process and some of them really hurt me. I also realised that they were lashing out and projecting their anger and fears onto me and in the process making me feel guilty about absolutely everything. After a few days of ‘nuclear fallout’ we were able to sit down and discuss how to work together from now on.

It was decided and agreed that our hormones often get the better of us and we need to accept this fact. We will all have good days and bad days, but we had to learn to live with this. We came up with the idea of a code word to help us when we were having a ‘fragrant moment’. Our code is: code blue. When the words code blue are uttered by us, the others need to understand that we are feeling out of sorts, grumpy, irritated or angry about something. It may not mean that we are feeling those things towards each other, it might be an outside incident or person that has made us feel that way. Code blue means, back off, let me deal with this, and when I am ready I will talk about it and if I don’t talk about don’t take it personally. It is a sign to show respect to the others and allow them that moment, acknowledging that they are in a bad space. The other rule of code blue is that you can mutter the words but you cannot make everyone else suffer because you are going through the ‘code blue’ moment.

This has helped us to deal with each other, to understand that sometimes the paw-paw hits the fan and that is okay. Acknowledging this to the family helps all of us understand and give space to the person who needs to get a handle on their emotions.

In the past we all thought that we were personally responsible for the bad mood one of us was in. We have now learnt that this is not the case and sometimes life just catches up with us and we have a down moment. It has also helped us to realise that we are not personally responsible for trying to get the other person into a happy space. We need to step back and let that person work through it on their own. We are also more direct with things, if one of us does something that hurts or irritates another we speak up about it but always in a polite manner.

We have found a coping mechanism that works for us and life is more chilled.